Heavenbent
by Raihu
Summary: Kikyou x shinidamachuu: Reincarnation moves in circles in endless corridors in empty space.


A/N - The shinidamachuu are more commonly known as soul skimmers, and anyone who believes that life simply begins and then simply ends has clearly never been reincarnated.

* * *

Heavenbent

Morning lurks on the far side of the world, brandishing a slender knife that curves like a smile and flashes opaline in the deep darkness. Nothing dares to move or breathe. Hissing in its sleep, night rolls onto one side and suddenly the bright blade arcs outward, sinking and twisting, cutting cool paths that wander along belly and flank and then suddenly split wide. There is no pain. Light is vomited across the horizon; the stink of hunts, of ruttings and terror, begins to retreat.

This is called dawn. This is beautiful, and Kikyou walks.

And Kikyou walks.

And Kikyou sees nothing, as all the world passes beneath her feet.

* * *

Being alone is a relative thing. She has been alone with herself before. She has been alone with her sister in the part of the forest where shadows stretch green and gold like poisoned wings, though that was a very long time ago and she cannot be sure that it was not a dream. She has been alone with Inuyasha many times; he never tried to touch her, and she never tried to touch him, and it was always the only thing they could think about, all of this not-touching where no one could see it. Once she wondered what they were trying to prove, but that was a tainted thought; she recognized the ragged scent of lust-demons in the sweet air. She batted it away, then turned to Inuyasha and calmly suggested that he might learn to enjoy life as a mortal man.

This is the first time she has _felt_ alone. Demons are everywhere; birds move unseen through the blinding sky; her shinidamachuu spool around her like long, hungry threads. And she is unable to feel any of them, even when she reaches out with both hands. They are origami creatures, set against a backdrop of the world painted in fading inks. Paper in her hands, crumbling and falling through her fingers.

Though she is built only of dirt and ash and the spittle of her enemies, those things make up the ground underfoot and the taste on her brown, cracked tongue. She is the only one who remains real. She is of the earth and the earth has two sides; one for the senses of the living, and one for the senseless dead. Bound to both, she sees life and colour and weight and warmth for the illusions they are; she breaks them down with her cold hands, down to the basic components, the naked meaning.

What she finds is incomprehensible. Visible and invisible. Reaching inward and crawling out. Something urgent about constructing soft, supple new clusters of cells from the old ones before they can succumb to the patient shift of entropy. Cosmic gibberish.

She and the shinidamachuu are vaguely disappointed.

* * *

Whenever Kikyou's concentration slips - it does not happen very often - one or more of the shinidamachuu will spiral fearlessly into her and plunge out the other side. It alarms her, the sudden fluid rush, the quick flex of ethereal muscles against her insides, and then the great gaping space they leave behind. As they withdraw, she feels herself drawn after them, her insides slipping outside as though caught and dragged by hooks. The sensation is brief, but it reaches her through the fog, and the memory of it always lingers.

Sometimes there is sound.

Sometimes they speak, and they say:

_The leaves are the stars are the dreams in our jaws_. _We will eat them_; _we will lick their silver sides and drink in their truths until we have only bones, and the bones turn to dust_.

Kikyou does not understand, but she approves, and the shinidamachuu are permitted to do as they will.

* * *

It occurs to her eventually that the victims of her creatures must feel that same wash of reality and distortion, hear the same whispers in the film at the back of their mouths. Only once, of course; but still - once. Just as the soul is tugged free and carried into weightlessness, it must see both sides for an instant. It must _know_, and recognize the shaking mess from which it was born because it is dying, easing back into the clamour and riot of nonexistence. That is the part Kikyou cannot grasp; she must have seen it once, but does not remember. Before they lose all sense of themselves, she listens carefully to the souls, trying to discern a murmur of surprise or fear or annoyance. Something that might remind her what it was like to reach an end that never ended.

None of them ever make a sound.

The shinidamachuu twitch and roll through her, and whisper the words every soul knows without knowing why.

_Ascending, falling at last, upwards past the sky_. _This is not so far to travel after all_.

* * *

Kikyou is cursed with a kind of immortality. She wanders forever, forgetting where her body went. Someone must have broken it when she was looking elsewhere.

The earth walks the dead, beating them to dust, and Kikyou's flesh is everywhere, in the trees, in the air. She does not mind; she is out in the ether now, banking through iridescent corridors that bend in on themselves and lead after the dynamic point in time and direction that is Nowhere. The shinidamachuu clutch her, trying to find the place where they had taken all the others, but it is long gone and will remain so until they release her.

It is not meant for her. She is not meant for it.

They soar through damnation, never letting go; always, always picking up speed.

* * *

Once upon a time, a little girl drew her first breath and swallowed the last traces of a dead woman, and spent the rest of her life learning that there really are no happy endings.


End file.
